Microsoft Office Headache

Hey guys, This is a problem I have had for awhile, and its giving me a bit of a headache. My computer came pre-loaded with a copy of "Microsoft Office Starter" which basically contains a shitty version of both excel and word 2010. My school offered a free download of Office 2010, via a website called "onthehub.com" I went to the website, downloaded Office 2010 with no problems. Here's where it gets tricky: Any time I open a Word Document from either my desktop/folder/email/whatever, it automatically opens it in Word Starter rather than Microsoft Word. If I want to be able to edit it fully, I have to open Microsoft Word then open the document manually.

I've tried a couple of fixes:

1. Uninstalled Microsoft Office Starter I'm then unable to access ANY word files on my computer. I click on a Word file, and it asks me to activate my copy of Office 2010. I think "Wtf...I already activated it". It then says my product key is invalid because I already activated my product.
2. Changing Word Preferences This is one thing I've always thought to do...but don't really know how to change. Is there a way to change the default program that opens documents from emails/folders/desktop? Microsoft tech support was hours of uselessness. PLEASE AND THANK YOU REDDIT.